Football's Carpetbagger Bowl

Thursday's Battle for Supremacy in Oregon Will Be Filled With Players Not From There

By

Darren Everson

Updated Dec. 3, 2009 12:01 a.m. ET

A football game Thursday will be the biggest in the history of Oregon. For the first time ever, the winner of the annual showdown between the Oregon Ducks and Oregon State Beavers is guaranteed to be the Pac-10 Conference's Rose Bowl representative. The game will be played before some 58,000 fans, and it has followers of both teams dreaming of a January trip to Pasadena.

It just won't be decided by Oregonians.

ENLARGE

The Oregon Ducks and Oregon State Beavers, shown facing off in last year's game, renew their rivalry Thursday night.
Getty Images

These two bitter rivals rely more than virtually any other big college-football program on out-of-staters. Of the 65 schools in the six BCS (or major) conferences, Oregon has signed the highest percentage of out-of-staters over the past five years (93%). Oregon State is sixth (85%). While the Beavers have seven starters from in-state, the only major home-state contributors on Oregon's roster are the left tackle and the kicker.

By contrast, Pac-10 foes USC and Cal have gone outside their talent-rich state for about one-third of their signed recruits in the past five years. Texas has gone past its borders for only 7% of its signed recruits in that span.

Blame geography. "You have nowhere to go," says former longtime Oregon coach Rich Brooks, now the coach at Kentucky. "The Pacific Ocean is on one side of you. Washington, Idaho and low-population areas are around you. So you have to go south."

The two schools are about the same size and not quite 50 miles apart, but they're far apart in spirit. Oregon State, in rural Corvallis, was founded as a land-grant college, while Oregon, to the south along Interstate 5 in Eugene, is known as the liberal-arts school.

"It's like night and day," says former Ducks great Ahmad Rashad, now a host for NBA TV. "Eugene is like San Francisco; Corvallis is quieter." Oregon State traditionally draws more fans from the central and eastern parts of the state, says Beavers Coach Mike Riley, while Oregon, the rise of which has partly been bankrolled by Nike co-founder and alum Phil Knight, is more popular in the cosmopolitan northwest, around Portland. This year's game is in Eugene, a major advantage for the favored Ducks.

Oregon backers are known for looking down on their ag-school rival, but neither side had much to crow about for decades. The schools' arid recruiting ground and formerly shoddy facilities crippled the two teams, as did the ability of powerhouse teams to stockpile top local players before the advent of scholarship limits.

"There isn't the hoarding of players now that took place back then," says Dan Fouts, a legendary former Ducks quarterback and now CBS NFL analyst. From 1965 through 1988, Oregon won no more than six games in any season. Oregon State had losing seasons every year from 1971 through 1998.

The 1983 matchup was the nadir for the rivalry. Played in a downpour, it featured four missed field goals, five interceptions, 11 fumbles and ended in a scoreless tie—the last one in major-college football, which now settles ties in overtime. "I'm glad there was something to remember," says then-Oregon State coach Joe Avezzano.

A quarter century later, both schools have become consistent winners.

Oregon has become known for its high-powered spread offense and its disconcertingly loud home stadium, Oregon State for coming out of nowhere to upset USC in 2006 and 2008. Oregon (9-2) this week could clinch its fifth 10-win season this decade, and Oregon State (8-3) is going for a fourth-straight season of at least nine wins. They have done so largely by identifying underrated California high-school players whom the local schools didn't want or couldn't fit on their rosters.

"It's remarkable," says Oregon athletic director and ex-coach Mike Bellotti, who coached the Ducks for 14 seasons before turning over the program to former assistant Chip Kelly this year. "I wish it was this way every year. The fact that the winner is going to the Rose Bowl is an amazing accomplishment for where Oregon football is—the state of Oregon, both Oregon and Oregon State. It's a tremendous slap on the back."

As a producer of football players, Oregon is a mom-and-pop shop compared with the factories elsewhere. In a given year, eight to 10 major-college-caliber players graduate from Oregon high schools, Oregon State's Mr. Riley says, far fewer than the 20 or so that each major program needs each year. By comparison, in 2008, Miami signed eight players from one nearby high school (Miami Northwestern). "Recruiting is a function of population," says Mr. Bellotti. "We're 3 ½ million in Oregon. That's half the Bay Area."

And there's no guarantee that even those rare Oregonian blue chips will stick around. Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu, who attended high school in Winston, some 80 miles south of the Oregon campus, chose USC. Ndamukong Suh, a Portland native, picked Nebraska and is now a star defensive lineman there.

The Oregon Ducks have fashioned winning teams by a number of means: raiding California, plumbing the junior-college ranks (quarterback Jeremiah Masoli played at the City College of San Francisco) and even going national. Because of Oregon's growing profile, the Ducks have been able to attract four-star recruits from across the country like redshirt freshman LaMichael James, Oregon's speedy running back from Texas.

But it's California that drives Oregon. Nine of the Ducks' 11 starters on defense hail from the the neighbor to the south, six of them from Southern California.

"A great example is Kenny Rowe," says Rick Kimbrel, a recruiting analyst for Rivals.com, referring to Oregon's sack leader, who is from Long Beach. "He's a guy that could probably play on either USC or UCLA, but Oregon went and got him. They do a great job identifying talent, and they win enough recruiting battles. It's kind of like what Washington did during its run in the 1990s."

Oregon State has had to be even more resourceful. "We're pretty much an outpost in our league," says Coach Riley. "We're rural; we're quite a ways from an airport. Understanding that and getting the right type of person to come to your school is really key."

Oregon State also has been mining Southern California—its entire starting defensive backfield is from there, as is lefty starting quarterback Sean Canfield—but the Beavers have gone local just as their rivals have fanned out nationally. OSU also has been adept at turning nonscholarship players into contributors. Two of their starting offensive linemen, Grant Johnson and Mike Remmers, are Oregonians who walked on to the team.

And they've been lucky. The Beavers stumbled upon Jacquizz Rodgers, their shifty, star sophomore running back from Richmond, Texas, when an OSU assistant traveled there to recruit his older brother James. The elder Mr. Rodgers, a 5-foot-7 receiver who had gotten modest attention elsewhere, chose OSU, and his brother followed the next year.

Now they'll try to deliver OSU to its first Rose Bowl since the 1964 season and repay the Ducks for last year. Oregon, which hasn't made it since the 1994 season, prevented OSU from going to the Rose last season in a 65-38 rout. Says Mr. Rashad: "I'm so nervous about the game already."

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.